A number of posts on this blog about the Stacey Burns murder have addressed the issue of the truth. What exactly is it? Are there degrees of the truth? Is there really only one truth? Can perception affect the truth?
Recently, I remembered a quotation which I will paraphrase here and ask forgiveness of the originator since I can’t resurrect the name of the person responsible. It seems to apply to the Stacey Burns case and uncountable other situations. It was about people in the world who incorrectly think that only those hard facts which are favorable to them are really true. The next most obvious suggestion is that those facts which are unfavorable to them must not be true. This is all rather esoteric but there are hard facts in the Stacey Burns murder case. The problem is that these hard facts do not suit everyone’s version of what happened.
We really don’t get to select the truth. The truth is not a multiple choice test. There is only one truth. I know that there are people connected to the Stacey Burns case who have not told me or anyone else the truth. How do I know that? If one is told three or four versions of the same event, all substantially different, wouldn’t it follow that someone is not tell telling the truth or is rejecting hard facts that are not favorable to their story?
Philosophers have argued over concepts of the truth for ages. I’m not quite sure why when it should be so simple! Either something is true or it is not true, right?
Duke
